Delhi Police detain 64 Tibetan Youth Congress members near Bharat Mandapam

Delhi Police detained 64 members of the Tibetan Youth Congress on Saturday night after the group moved down Bhairon Marg toward Bharat Mandapam, where Chinese President Xi Jinping was in the city for the 18th BRICS summit. The Hindu put the time of the rush at late evening. Phayul, which spoke to TYC officials, said the protest began around 21:45 and drew people from at least 15 regional chapters. Protesters carried the Tibetan flag. Video from the scene shows some of them being pulled to police vehicles.

TYC general secretary Tenzin Lobsang gave Phayul a station-wise count: 19 men and 10 women at Mandawali, three men and two women at Ashok Vihar, 10 people at Gokulpuri, and 16 at Gazipur. Four other members, he said, had been picked up in the city before they could reach the march, and their stations were not known at the time of that interview. The Hindu listed Mandawali, Ashok Vihar, Madhu Vihar and Gazipur. The small mismatch in names is typical of a night dispersal across east and north-west Delhi. No injuries were reported.

Two members of the TYC executive, Joint Secretary Tenzin Dekyong and Culture Secretary Thupten Tsering, were placed under house arrest after the protest, Phayul reported, citing sources. The organisation said the detained marchers were expected to be released on Sunday evening.

Lobsang said the action was not aimed at India’s decision to host the summit. The demand list he repeated was specific: release of Tibetan political prisoners, a halt to construction the group calls reckless on the plateau, and an end to Chinese interference in Tibetan religious succession. “The question of Tibet remains directly connected to India’s national security and regional stability,” he said. That last clause is the line Indian governments have heard from the exile community since 1959. It is also the line New Delhi mutes when a Chinese president is in the building.

Saturday night was not the first detention of the visit. On 11 September, three Students for a Free Tibet activists, Karma Dolma, 24, Tenzin Nordon, 23, and Tenzin Tsephal, 26, climbed poles in an underpass near the venue, waved flags and banners that called Xi a genocidaire, and were placed under preventive detention until 14 September at Tihar. Two others, a student named Harshit and Kasang of Tibet Radio, were held for taking photographs. Deputy Commissioner of Police (North) Niharika Bhatt said police had already spoken to community leaders and resident welfare associations to discourage protests.

Xi’s trip is his first to India in nearly seven years. He held a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the summit sidelines on 12 September. Both sides described “steady progress” since their August 2025 meeting. The street in front of the venue told a different story about what parts of the Indian public still want said out loud.

Preventive detention around a visiting head of state is standard practice in Delhi. The useful measure this time is the split between the three SFT climbers sent toward Tihar until the 14th and the 64 TYC members processed through four or five local stations with a Sunday release promised. That is the difference between a planned climbing action and a flag march that got too close to the perimeter. It is also a record of how much political space the exile organisations retain when Beijing is a guest rather than a headline.

If the Sunday evening releases happen on time, the story closes as a security footnote to the summit. If house arrest on the Centrex members continues after Xi leaves, it becomes a longer argument about how India polices a refugee community it still hosts and still silences on the days that matter to the relationship with China.